EDITORIAL - Another animal pestilence

Even as the hog industry is still grappling with African swine fever, another threat to livestock is on the horizon. Lumpy skin disease, a viral infection affecting cattle, is spreading in several countries, prompting the Department of Agriculture to ban imports of cows, buffalo, their meat and by-products including milk from Libya, Russia, South Korea and Thailand.

The disease, first reported in Africa a century ago, has spread to the Middle East, Turkey, the Balkans and parts of Asia. While the virus is not always fatal to the animal, the infection can spread quickly and the disease, with the characteristic unsightly skin eruptions or nodules, reduced milk yield and emaciation, can lower the commercial value of cattle.

Attenuated virus vaccines are available against lumpy skin disease, along with antibiotics against secondary infection. Veterinary experts, however, have warned that containing the disease and caring for infected cattle can be difficult with large herds.

In the case of ASF, players in the local hog industry have complained that lax measures at the ports allowed the entry of tainted pork and pork products from abroad. They also lamented the weakness of farm containment measures as well as the lack of or limited indemnification for affected hog raisers, which discouraged reporting of ASF cases and contributed to the spread of the disease nationwide.

Since the first case of ASF was detected in the Philippines in 2019, thousands of hogs have been culled. At the end of 2023, the Department of Agriculture reported that ASF had been recorded in 64 of the country’s 83 provinces.

While ASF does not jump to humans and the meat of infected hogs can still be edible, the commercial value of the pork is reduced. ASF can also quickly spread and decimate the hogs in an entire farm. Local hog raisers have complained that they have suffered from the double whammy of ASF and too much importation of pork and pork products that have pulled down farm gate prices while retail prices remain high.

Vietnam has developed a vaccine for ASF together with US researchers, but the vaccine is not yet available for widespread dissemination in the Philippines. In the case of lumpy skin disease, vaccines are available. Apart from better monitoring at all ports of entry, efforts must be made to ensure that vaccines will be on hand in case the LSD virus is detected in the Philippines. The country has seen the consequences of a virus going out of control in the case of ASF. It should not be repeated with lumpy skin disease.